Is there an ideal ratio? Like maybe 75% fat and 25% protein?
Can one eat too much protein on the Carnivore Diet? Leading to colon problems or the like?
Just asking and wanting to do it right. (I’d always read that for me, around 125g of protein is max.)
thanks for all input
Even I (no carnivore, just flirting with it and I never want to stray too far for too long as it’s the best woe I ever did) can tell you that there are no fixed ideal ratios in general. For some, 80% fat works the best. For others, 65% is the comfortable and nice. Some of us have a wide range, others a small one, in grams. I like to keep my (wide) range, no matter how much I eat and anyway, I can’t imagine eating twice as much protein just because I need twice as many calories on some day. A high-calorie day is fattier in my life (and usually has more protein but not proportionally) and I can’t imagine it will ever change, it’s very logical and convenient to me. But whatever feels right to my body. One of the benefits of carnivore that I don’t need to think way too hard about these things. I just like to experiment for fun and information about my own body. I don’t care about percentages, they aren’t important for me.
As Shinita @Shinita said we all need to find out the balance which works for us. I don’t think there are likely to be colon problems because colonic inflammation has a genetic switch which is switched off by betahydroxybutyrate. There are two ways of getting BOHB into the blood stream - one is by having the appropriate organisms in your gut microbiome which digest resistant starch and the other is by being in ketosis and generating your own BOHB from burning your body fat .
Prof Stephen Phinney talks about it at Low Carb Down Under 2017
There are three parts to this talk and they are worth watching all the way through.
Thanks both. So real newbie question here, is it the increased protein or increased fat that will cause us to feel full? (on the Carnivore Diet that is)
Put another way, if i’m not feeling full, should I eat more protein or more fat?
Some people find protein more satiating. Personally I find fat satiating. However, I do not want to give my body no reason to burn stored fat so I try not to overdo added fat,.
It will take a few weeks for you to become fat adapted, so the thing to focus on initially will be keeping your carbs as low as you can whilst you adapt.
I am assuming that you have a weight loss goal as well as a better health goal, but maybe I am wrong. What are your goals for this way of eating?
The 75/25 ratio is the one that occurs naturally in beef (taking calorific values) roughly.
100g of sirloin steak gives 75.5% ft to 24.5 % protein . Why argue with perfection?
Eat enough to be satiated and you should be fine.
I average about 140g of protein but that can vary widely depending on exactly what I’m eating with things like chicken protein is a lot higher obviously.
I weigh 205lb right now. Trying to stay at around 1850 cals daily (which is about 450 cals below my what you call it point, keeping level), so trying to limit my protein to 125g. But yesterday I had to overeat at around 2100 cals to be near satisfied. Yep, 75/25 seems about right.
Goals, Polly are (yes, I wrote these down)
Good tip about the ‘not overeating fat’ so as to burn more body fat.
I’ve of course read about ‘EAT MORE FAT’ to satiety, but then common sense tells me that eating 3 tablespoons of olive oil and butter won’t make me seem as full as eating 5 oz of sirloin. I just wanted you guys take on this. Plus I’ve read all these horror stories on eating too much protein, causing colon cancer, liver damage, high LDL, etc.
Decreased carbs for me… I don’t need to increase anything, I will be satiated better if I just lower my carbs. It doesn’t matter if it’s carnivore or not, it’s a general rule for me. More carbs -> more protein and fat is needed for satiation.
But it matters what exactly I eat, even on carnivore.
It depends and it matters what kind of fat, what kind of protein. To me, added fat doesn’t work, cream doesn’t work, they aren’t satiating. Fat tissue seemingly works. Fatty protein sources work but especially meat. For some people, added fat works if solid and not if liquid if I remember correctly. Added fat in general works for many people.
I almost never eat fat alone but if my protein is already high, I would rather eat very fatty protein. If my protein is barely adequate but my fat is high, I would focus on protein, it may be leaner. Except if I fancied something else.
But it’s best just eating my normal, satiating food without thinking hard about these things. As much as needed. If my protein intake is twice as much on some day than on the previous one, it’s fine for me. (I try to track but it’s not very reliable if one eats fatty meat with unknown fat content. Still, I can guess my macros vaguely. Good enough. I don’t even need to track, it’s just interesting and I learn about myself.)
I usually eat a big meal and if I am still hungry, a bit of something, whatever sounds good and satiating (it’s usually a bite of smoked fatty pork, very effective and I can eat it any time easily). But I can just stop and the hunger passes eventually, it always works if I ate a big enough meal. But hunger and satiation doesn’t work the same for everyone anyway. And it was vastly different in the beginning for me. My food choices matter. The fact I want to lose fat but I don’t have so very much to lose matters. Even my past matters though not so much on carnivore, it’s amazing how old stubborn habits can disappear suddenly on the right diet that gives us perfect satiation. And sometimes we are hungrier. If you are hungry, eat more of your good food, it’s a good basic approach. If it doesn’t work for you for some reason, you can think about what to change but I love to be very chill and see if things get sorted out almost by themselves.
It’s perfectly fine to eat more now and then, I always had that on every diet even when I lost fat. I have lower-calories days too. If it’s a single day, it’s always fine for me and probably for most people.
From everything I read when I was switching mindsets on minimizing protein because I was affraid of the GNG monster to being higher protein it seems only people that have issues already (may) want to limit protein and that simply eating a high protein diet is fine for basically everybody. I shoot for at least 200g/day these days. No issues, because of other stuff I have labs done 3-4x a year, if I started pissing off my kidneys, or really most things, I’d see it.
Here’s a trio of 10 and 12-year carnivores discussing exactly this. One is extremely high fat one is higher protein One is in the middle https://youtu.be/kDCGHglNSbg
That was very informative and explains a lot about what I was going through when I went carnivore and struggled with it to the point of giving up. I eat mostly wild game meats that are lean and was always hungry and craving more. Explains why I gained so much weight in my 6 month attempt. Encourages me to try again in the near future. Will do more homework and maybe make it a new years resolution!
Thanks for posting that @Elizedge.
the minute you ‘control’ zc into kilograms or ounces you are screwing yourself up big time.
just eat meat and seafood. simple. If you eat leaner like chicken or lean beef you will find yourself maybe ‘wanting’ and if so increase fat content.
If you are satisfied then fine.
More you play with numbers in zc the more ya lose and don’t understand this plan at all.
Also your body is healing and going thru adaption time. So as one heals the body your eating will change around some. Your body will ask for what it needs. Your body wants more protein or fat ya give it. Your body asks for less, you don’t eat as much.
I know the simplicity of it is hard to accept for many like to control down to the micro ounce LOL but zc is what it is…a heal the body, eat meat and fat as needed and let the plan do its thing for us. It takes individual timing for us to heal and more so it is a very personalized plan also.
just my take on it all 
In the lecture by Dr. Stephen Phinney linked above, he mentions that many people who eat carnivore/ZC find themselves eating twice the amount of protein than he recommends for a well-formulated ketogenic diet. He speculates that this may be the result of needing a certain amount of potassium and magnesium, and that increased protein intake may be the only way to get enough on a ZC/carnivore diet. (In this connexion, homemade bone broth, cooked long enough for the bone to start breaking down, can be of help, since the marrow of the bones is a good source of these minerals. “Lite” salt, which is half magnesium might also be helpful, Dr. Phinney says.)
The main difference between ZC and regular keto is that, by allowing ourselves to eat leafy green vegetables, we are getting plenty of magnesium, because a magnesium atom is at the heart of every molecule of chlorophyll. In this connexion, the darker the green the more magnesium. As I have mentioned many times, getting enough salt is extremely helpful with retaining good amounts of potassium, magnesium, and calcium, since the mechanisms regulating the levels of these minerals in the human body are all interlinked. On a ketogenic diet that includes plant matter, we may need to work to keep our salt intake high enough, but many people on a ZC/carnivore diet find there is little need to add salt, they get enough from the meat. Dr. Phinney suggests listening to our body in this, as in other things.
ahhh, yup the great science of speculating and guessing LOL joking but truth of course
thing is zc is NOT a ketogenic diet in that sense. It is a eat meat/seafood and fat menu to heal. It is to eliminate foods. We do not and won’t strive for being in ketosis. We burn ketones etc. but we are not ingesting any carbs to have any additional glucose in our bodies from other materials. Plant eating you gain low level toxins and more into your body. A keto plan is never a zc plan and we can’t go there.
thing is we can’t compare the 2. The theory of being in ketosis and being on a ketogenic menu is not and will not ever equal zc.
People eat more cause their bodies are healing, they are detoxing, they were probably nutritionally starved physically and the body asks for big food to heal. Simple as that. Plus tho, as being human obvy, we do have to sometimes fight old habits of eating too much and listening to our bodies etc…so yea that can be thrown in but zc is not vitamin/mineral deficient in that we eat more to get more magnesium etc. ZC ain’t a keto plan and again isn’t the same and comparisons aren’t equal.
it can’t and won’t so all the ‘info about being in ketosis and on a ketogenic’ diet doesn’t have weight in a zc plan. ZC is an animal all its own for sure 
I suspect I need less magnesium on carnivore or on any diet close to it. We know our needs may change on carnivore (they truly change regarding vitamin C but there may be others). It’s only N=1 but whenever I entered ketosis without supplementing magnesium before, I got cramps and a magnesium pill solved that. I dislike supplements in general but I couldn’t eat anywhere the recommended amount of magnesium, I simply had no good magnesium sources.
When I tried carnivore (admittedly on/off but I still experienced important changes), I stopped needing magnesium - until my meat intake became super low (and with it, the off days more frequent), then the cramps come back.
It’s a special N=1 as I hate most green leaves and never ate them on keto. I tried but in vain. I can’t eat food I don’t enjoy. The usually little meat on carnivore (and carnivore-ish) is still an improvement as my previous keto had negligible meat (a little bit once a month towards the end, truly vegetarian keto in the beginning).
My magnesium intake probably stayed similarly low (once I looked at it… It was long ago, I need to check it with cronometer again if its data is reliable enough… it’s probably not that easy as the same kind of meat may be quite different from different sources, I don’t know if it affects magnesium and anything that affects its absorption) but just skipping plants and adding meat still solved my problem. Cramps didn’t come just now and then, it was practically every time I entered ketosis (and I did that a lot) without supplementing magnesium (that I kept forgetting) so when it stopped, it was very noticeable. It’s either the almost complete lack of plants or the presence of a significant amount of meat or both but my magnesium need seems to be smaller now…
I eat the least protein on carnivore and carnivore-ish but I don’t have long-term data yet so this isn’t reliable. But very logical to me. Meat satiates me the best, hands down. So I eat the least calories, carbs, protein and fat on carnivore with much meat while having the most perfect satiation. At least it seems so, I wish to try it out for longer and with a truly decent meat intake but I can’t do it yet.
5g salt a day worked for me on every diet, it’s clearly individual… I consume some more now due to salted pork, it seems to work too but I really avoid going overboard with that item, for various reasons, even though it’s good quality from a trusted farm. Eating food with a legally up to 7% salt content isn’t ideal for me, I feel that.
Dr. Phinney explains this as resulting from not getting enough sodium, as well as not enough magnesium. Apparently the constant high level of insulin we experience on a high carbohydrate diet causes the kidneys to excrete sodium at a slower rate, and lowering insulin by eating less carbohydrate allows them to return to the normal, faster rate—a situation called the “natriuresis of fasting,” because that’s where it was first observed (ketosis and fasting are in many ways, similar states). The point being that, in the absence of sufficient sodium, potassium and magnesium can also get out of whack. At the proper sodium intake, potassium, magnesium, and calcium are also kept in proper balance.
In one of Dr. Phinney’s lectures that I recently re-watched, he recommends “lite” salt as a cheap means of supplementing magnesium. In another, he recommends a supplement called Slo-Mag as being better than other brands.
I can’t resist adding, as a general comment, that although the eating plans associated with the terms “LCHF,” “ketogenic diet,” and “ZC/carnivore” are distinct, our physiological state is pretty much the same. If our liver is producing ketone bodies, then we are in ketosis and fatty acid metabolism is predominating regardless of what we were eating to get there. Otherwise glucose metabolism is prevailing, which is a generally less-desirable state of affairs.
and this is part why zc can never be compared to those counting macros and controlling plant food intake. No plants, no low level toxins, no sugar intake/carbs and our bodies will not work totally the same as deep down cellular functioning. A zc person is not eating what a person trying to stay in ketosis is eating. What is eat is who we are truly What we don’t eat is key to our plan and our bodies.
ZC people eat to heal and the body asks just for that. Longer on plan as we change and heal, we eat less. Listen to our bodies and stop thinking we ‘might need XYZ’ when zc truly just gives us focus if we just listen. Many guess what they think they need but in the end, without bloodwork no one has a stinking clue what they are lacking in or any other type of guesswork ain’t gonna tell you either.
Guess all we want tho I guess
Which is why most successful transfers into zc function best on just eat. Eat all ya want, when ya need it, listen to your body, adjust fat intake as you feel you need etc. and if specific issues come up ask a longer term zc person (or any vlc type person might be able to help in some situations) but zc is truly a plan to itself. Best chat with those doing the plan to get real answers thru experiences is best for newbie zc people. People who are on the plan long term and have time under their belt with experience can lead zc newbies best truly if they follow the real zc plan and are going for this ride.
I think the definition of what is high protein can be quite vague. I’d see 1 gram per lb of ideal bodyweight as basic. Having tried both higher fat and higher protein, I’d lean into the latter for when I’m dieting down. If I had more calories to play with, I’d increase the former.
Then there’s all the individual factors, like how well someone can free up their fat stores for energy, or how much they have left, how hard they’re training. That’s why I like 1g/lb as a starting point. From there, it’s trial and error, and calorie counting.